Ed, I was thinking about the box culverts as I reasd the article. As a Civil Engineer, I have used them in numerous applications as a cost effetive alternative to poured in place concrete. I would expect a bunker design would be an easy adaptation of the typical box culvert instalation. The ends can be precast solid or with openings for addition of steel or aluminum doors. Openings can also be cast in the sides or tops for hatch or vent installation with some size limitations. 12′ x 12′ x 4′ running length is as big as you can truck… Read more »

Gaye, I have worked for Green Giant for many years. It is their harvest season now. They have giant warehouses to in which to store their can goods for the next year. They have to get rid of last years cans, to make room for this year’s cans. Have you noticed that in the fall of the year, can fruits and vegetables go on sale. I’m not telling you to not buy them, but keep in mind that most of them are last years crops, and as such, are one year old when you buy them.

I’ve seen a few people saying that an EMP attack would be more destructive than a nuclear war. It wouldn’t. An actual nuclear war would cause unimaginable devastation. Major cities would be flattened and burned by multiple strikes. Airports, harbors and military bases would be hit. Smaller warheads would take out freeway intersections and rail junctions. Parts of the country would be blanketed in fallout. Dust and smoke pumped into the atmosphere by the explosions would block the sun’s light for weeks, adding cold weather to all the other hazards. Then, on top of that, you’d have the EMP as well. Every weapon would cause local EMP damage, and it’s almost certain that high altitude EMP bursts would be included in the strike to maximize the chaos. A major nuclear war would be a lot worse than an EMP. Short of an impact from a slate-wiper asteroid it would be worse than anything I can imagine.

Precious Metals – Investigate this for yourself, but I find the arguments and historical track records against fiat currency and the current rumblings of Government wanting to take care of your investments for you very compelling. Gold is easier to transport with the high cost to weight, but you might have problems cashing a gold coin for a tank of gas. Silver is where I have chosen to invest in precious metals.

At a minimum, a good framing hammer, hand saw or hacksaw, medium prybar, axe, shovel, vise grips, screwdrivers, fixed blade general purpose knife, small mechanics kit with wrenches, can of all-purpose lube, sturdy cordage (paracord or accessory line) and duct tape. Ensure you have an adequate wrench or similar tool that can shut off water and gas valves in and around your home.
To be truthful, my initial goal with this article was to respond to readers who were just getting started and wanted a shopping list of things to buy for their food storage pantry. I also wanted to compile a checklist that more experienced preppers could use to compare what they had to what they needed. My goal can pretty much be summed up by saying that I wanted to write about getting started with food storage the easy way. No frills, no fluff – just a common sense list of food items to get you started.

It would also be good to have trapping, and hunting equipment on hand. Things like compound bows; machetes, knives, a knife block, snare wire and a rifle with ammunition would be a few things to start with. Prepper food-storage is needed, but in times of adversity and emergency, having a way of protecting yourself and a way to hunt food is optimal and ideal.

A thought on food. We are moving to our long term chunk of land soon. Bunker or similar is long term plan down the road. Meantime as part of us being more self sufficient we have been exploring and getting into Aquaponics. This would require electricity and the right lighting for interior food growth. it would also be something you would want setup before hand. That said, this is a great way to produce long term self sustaining food sources. i would certainly still include the norms for support and back up food. My initial thought process is hiding my entrance within a small aquaponics greenhouse. This allows me to do it within my bunker without suspicion from daily entry. There are also a number of new technological ways to automate and monitor you systems remotely.
Austere Living Techniques- Everything gets harder when modern conveniences, luxuries really, disappear. Avoid feeling overwhelmed and helpless by practicing self-reliance and making do with less, now. Learn how to build cooking and camp fires, maintain hygiene, dispose of waste, control your body temperature and create what you need. This is not just for “bush life,” and will prove valuable when the electricity and gas is cut off.
So, what about specialty prepper food? Is there such a thing? Yes. Even though you can turn your everyday food into prepper food simply by storing it away under the proper conditions, you can also purchase speciality prepper food that has a long shelf-life and will keep you and your family well-fed for a long time. There are basically two types of specialty prepper food – MREs and freeze dried food.
FEMA and its federal partners understand that improving the EAS is a process that takes time. IPAWS has compiled experiential lessons learned and best practices from the Alaska EAS Tests in 2010 & 2011 as well as through the EAS rebuilding effort and tsunami live-code test in the U.S. Virgin Islands (located in the EAS Tests and Demonstrations section). Laboratory research is also being conducted at IPAWS.

I just downloaded your lists and I find them to be VERY valuable. So much so that I’ll be having my stay at home wife/co-prepper go through all of our supplies this coming week and populate all of the lists. We already had one for our BOB’s but it makes me realize we need good ones for food beyond just going through the pantry every 6 months and replacing. We need additional for security (ammo, firearms), fuel (white gas for coleman, kindling for BioLite, hardwood for indoor stove), water (we only store about 5 cases of bottled but it does need to rotate. We store so little b/c of space constraints in the big city and we have no less than a homemade Berkey, coffee filters by the 1000’s for pre-filtering the REAL crud out, MSR backpackable and of course a handful of lifestraw’s. We have access to a 120,000 gallon swimming pool and can distill that or we have access to what we firmly believe is a spring fed creek below us, that runs 365 days a year, rain or not. Anyway, thanks for the sheets. We will take the premise and expand on it. I plan to combine them all into one giant workbook kept up to date on a USB key and kept protected in my Faraday. I will be able to use them via PC, laptop, Android phone and tablet that way.

The primary purchasers of the product are water treatment plants. Pool owners are just discovering it, but most aren’t seeing the advantage of having a non-degrading bleach supply. Once they start figuring out the savings from buying calcium hypochloride, and the retail price comes closer to the cost of pool chlorine, calcium hypochloride will become a hot seller.

In a lot of emergency situations, the grid and/or the internet will be down. It will be difficult to get the information you need in these situations. Your best option is to have hard copies of all the information you might need. You can print out a bunch of information from the internet or you can get a bunch of books, including the SAS Survival Guide.

Google has always been a reliable source for information. With Google Public Alerts, not only do you have access to weather warnings but also current events going on around the world. The program is still growing and perfecting but it’s an awesome addition to preppers repertoire. The system also provides information on where emergency responders should go.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, ignited an uproar when he was granted citizenship after spending just 12 days in the country, prompting allegations that New Zealand’s passport was for sale. Thiel, 50, owns a $13.8 million home on 477 acres (193 hectares) in the lakeside town of Wanaka, with views of snow-capped mountains, and purchased another property in Queenstown, outfitted with a safe room.

Of course, each of us should prepare for poor health, loss of job, loss of home due to local conditions, but you have support systems in place for localized problems. The area where I live was burned out four months ago. Over 1,000 homes were either destroyed or damaged. People have moved on. Reconstruction has started. Road are being cleared of mud and debris. We may have more local devastation, but it won’t affect 99.99% of the folks reading this post. An atomic attack, an EMP attack, a CME burst from the sun over a widespread area, a 1918 type of flu epidemic, all of those things will affect 99.99% of those reading this post. I don’t think those are bogus in the least nor hype just to get readers on this list. I sincerely hope that you re-consider your position that they are just hype to get readership.

14. Canned Cheese – A little company in Australia, called Bega, makes a wonderful canned cheese that can for a LONG time! The manufacturer says that the shelf life is only 2 years, but canned goods if handled properly can last much longer than that. Here is one prepper who opened them after 13 years, and the cheese still tasted great! Grab some Bega for your next camping trip, and see how you like it, may make a nice addition to your long term food storage plan!
Shelter: You can make basic shelters with cordage and a tarp. Tarps are very useful in a range of situations. Try this Ozark Trail 8’x10’ camo and green tarp. We need to do more research before determining whether hammocks or tents are better for most people, so sign up for our email newsletter to stay updated if you’re interested in a more dedicated BOB shelter. In the meantime, we love these Kammock Roo hammocks that are about the size of a melon.
I don’t encounter any preppers at the school that day, but I do meet women from all over the United States and with all kinds of reasons for wanting to learn how to cut and drill wood, including a young yoga studio employee from Wisconsin who is building some custom shelving for her kitchen appliances and cookbooks, as well as two seniors from Washington, DC, who want to build a set of matching cabinets to house their prized collection of vintage wine glasses. Down by the garden, I meet a pair of women from Missouri who are hoping to go into business flipping houses. “We’re tired of waiting for our husbands to do it,” one of them says.
Grylls makes great products. I use a lot of his gear when backpacking and this is a definite must. I have been through a couple hundred strikes on this and there is still about 90% of the flint left. It packs away very nicely and is very easy to use. You can produce huge sparks on this if you align the striker and flint properly. The cord that holds the two pieces together does get in the way a little bit since it is fairly short but if you make slow methodical strikes, the cord doesn't get the way too much. If anything it helps make sure that you don't get the two pieces separated. I would definitely recommend this product over other on the market. I bought this for just over $10 over a year ago and have used it on camping trips about every month since then. I ... full review
There’s a really good app called Prep and Pantry. It allows you to create did inventories, including expiration dates. It scans the barcode too so you don’t have to enter it by hand. This helps me know what I have and lets me plan my meals around when food is expiring. I think it’s about $8, but it’s helped me save a lot of money by not throwing food away.
With freeze dried foods you can get a good selection of nutritionally balanced foods and they are easy to carry, even if you have to bug out. They have a very long shelf-life of up to 25 years. The only drawback is if you don’t have water, you can’t rehydrate your food. Plus, it is ideal to have warm water so you can have a warm meal, so if there is no way to heat your water, then you will be eating a cold meal.
Combine dry ingredients and oil then add enough water to make a soft but not sticky dough. Knead for 5 minutes and let rest for 15 minutes. Roll out to whatever size you want them to be and then fry in a lightly oiled pan on medium heat, flipping once. You can flip more if needed. It can be hard to gauge cooking times well when you are using heat sources like wood fire or a camp stove.
But of the many women I spoke to for this story, none view their lifestyle as non-collaborative. For Andrea Chymiy, a family doctor who lives on an island several miles from mainland Washington and runs a blog called Lefty Prepper Mom, learning about emergency preparedness and writing about prepping is part of a wider commitment to community service: providing others with the emergency first-aid skills and food storage know-how to fend for themselves in the event of an earthquake or other natural calamity.
The disciples take Jesus’ remarks literally and incorrectly. They note that they have two swords, but Jesus cuts off the discussion. Something is not right, but it is too late to discuss it. As the arrest will show, they have misunderstood. They draw swords then, but Jesus stops their defense in its tracks. He is not telling them to buy swords to wield in physical battle. They will have to provide for themselves and fend for themselves, but not through the shedding of blood. They are being drawn into a great cosmic struggle, and they must fight with spiritual swords and resources. The purchase of swords serves only to picture this coming battle. This fight requires special weapons (Eph 6:10-18).

There is more to the business than just building a quality product. Aside of the advanced engineering that goes into underground structures, it’s also imperative for a company to have an advanced understanding of geology, excavation and the installation. We’ve been in the underground shelter business for more than a decade and we’ve installed more bunkers and bomb shelters than any of our competitors. This gives us a vast knowledge on every aspect of the business.

Thanks for another helpful article, Pat. I’d been wondering about long term food for my preps. I’ve never had MRE’s, although I have eaten “C” & “K” rations (remember those battleship gray-green cans?) an older relative brought home. My question is, how do I determine the best taste/value for my dollar? My goal of having 6 months to 1 year’s worth of food for a family will be significant in terms of money spent. Do you know of any “survival food” vendors who have trial offers for people to taste test BEFORE they plunk down 4 figures for boxes of… Read more »

Each of us has personal fears. It might be poor health. It might be a precarious job situation. There are a great number of individual calamities that can befall us, however, the fact that you have just been fired from your job, while I am concerned as I would be for anybody who has lost employment through no fault of his own, it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect my neighborhood. It doesn’t affect the distribution of food and utilities.

9. Cash. This isn’t exactly a product, but without a supply of cash during an emergency, you and your family could be left high and dry. Set aside some cash each month, in smaller bills, and have it ready to grab if you must ever leave your home in a hurry due to a natural disaster or some other crisis. Figure on having enough to pay for 7 nights at a hotel, 3 or 4 tanks of gas, and enough to pay for a week’s worth of food and other supplies.
rlb- Have you visited an urban school and seen what they have to work with in resources compared to wealthier schools? In the cities, real estate pimps rule and have all the power. Schools suffer. The media only ever shows the students & people after they have been driven from their houses by gentrification & lay-off’s. The corporations are the problem.
Your second gun should be a good hunting rifle. Bolt or semiauto is fine, and the ideal caliber is .308. Ammo is cheap and widely available because you can use 7.62mm NATO as well. It also has enough punch to take down just about any game. A handgun is a lower priority, but handy to have. Go for a high-capacity 9mm semi, if you’re buying one. Again the ammo is NATO standard and easy to find.
Regarding the 2L soda bottles, how long do you store them before changing out the water with fresh water? Would you say that the water stored in this way would only be good for cleaning clothes, washing dishes and bathing and not for drinking or cooking? I have pondered doing the same thing but wondered how long the water would stay fresh and free of bacterial growth etc. (aka safe to use).
There wasn’t much weather tracking prior to the late 19th century. Certainly, some individuals kept track of the weather as best they could locally, but it wasn’t organized into a regional or national scale perhaps until the mid 20th century. I am reading about the great desolation of the 1930s in the Eastern Colorado, Western Kansas, Oklahoma panhandle, North Texas area and even in the 1930s weather tracking was at best primitive. Dust storms came as big a surprise to the weather bureaus of the region as it did to the farmer on the ground.
In a Saturday, May 13, 2017 photo, Kenneth Young, of Queens, N.Y., walks up the side of one of the bunkers that Vivos is trying to lease at xFest, a three-day gathering for people who want to convert the site's bunkers, which formerly housed bombs, into shelters for protection against tyranny, anarchy, nuclear war, the end times or any other calamity that might befall civilization, in Igloo, S.D. (Chris Huber/Rapid City Journal via AP) Chris Huber / Rapid City Journal

If you’re one who needs to make some adjustments, that’s okay. Look at these suggestions and add the things you’re missing. It’s easy to take a basic storage and add the essentials to make it livable, but it needs to be done. As I did the research for my cookbook I wanted to include recipes that gave help to families no matter what they had stored. As I put the material together it was fascinating to discover what the pioneers ate is the type of things we store. But if you have stored only the 4 basics, there’s very, very little you can do with it. By adding even just a few things it greatly increases your options, and the prospect of your family surviving on it. As I studied how the pioneers lived and ate, my whole feeling for food changed. I realized our storage is what most of the world has always lived on. If it’s put together the right way we’ll be returning to good basic living with a few goodies thrown in.

A lot of prepping is common sense, but there’s very little of it around. The theory goes that it’s psychologically uncomfortable to think about death and dying, so people tend not to. And people often think that a disaster won’t happen to them, so they’re less likely to prepare. But it’s not very difficult, and it’s not expensive – I buy equipment from Amazon: a survival blanket, a sleeping hammock, one of those bottles that filters contaminants found in water. Most of the time you won’t need it. But it’s that one time when you really do, and you haven’t got it, or you haven’t taught yourself how to use it… that’s when it’s too late.
The #1 thing you.ve missed is to not store everything in the same place even if you are ‘bugging in’. I lost my home & all it’s contents to a fire on Christmas Day. All my dehydrated (by me plus bought stuff) jars & cans are gone, along with stuff I’d been saving…dog food, bleach, baking soda etc. Luckily I’d stored a little bit in the {untouched} detached garage. I mean a wind storm or flood could cause the same devastation. Just wanted to add that because it’s not something you think about. I know I didn’t til it happened.
There’s no real point in having lots of guns – and if they’re in different calibers they become an actual liability. Get the guns you need, then if you’re tempted to buy another, spend the money on ammunition or reloading components instead. A gun can be maintained and repaired; once ammunition’s been fired, it’s gone. Reloading is a great idea and can stretch your supplies but even then your reserves or propellant, bullets and primers won’t last forever. You need to start with a lot of ammo.
Regarding the 2L soda bottles, how long do you store them before changing out the water with fresh water? Would you say that the water stored in this way would only be good for cleaning clothes, washing dishes and bathing and not for drinking or cooking? I have pondered doing the same thing but wondered how long the water would stay fresh and free of bacterial growth etc. (aka safe to use).

Stockpiling food has another advantage that you didn’t mention. You will be buying tomorrows food at today’s prices. Food prices are not going to go down. Also by stockpiling food it allows you to buy when you want to ( on sale ) not when you need to. Many things can happen that a food storage could be put to an advantage. Job loss, Hours cut,medical or car repair bill not expected or planed for. All of these things could be used as a reason to stockpile food.

@Loonejack That WAS strange weather, wasn’t it. One storm after the other after the other. No relief for those poor people. Good idea not to live on the east coast. There are some saying that we are overdue for an Ice Age and that it could be here in the next decade or so but does any one REALLY know. It really does come down to speculation. There was a mini ice age in Europe from about the 16th to the 19th centuries. They’re not quite sure about the exact times. There were three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight warming. Everything goes in cycles, especially the sun, and if we do experience a true ice age then we’ll just have to deal with it. I would think in a situation like that people would come together for mutual survival.
Jennifer had already taken the necessary precautions the night Hurricane Maria came barreling through the Caribbean. The 46-year-old stay-at-home mom, who lives on two acres of land with her husband and four children atop a mountain in Manati, Puerto Rico, was ready to make use of the filter she’d purchased for sterilizing rainwater in case the taps ran dry. And she didn’t have to worry about food, because her pantry was already stocked with two-and-a-half years’ worth: giant buckets of lentils, flour, and rice; shelves lined with mason jars of fruits and vegetables she had grown and canned herself.
EVACUATION & LAST SHOPPING TRIP LISTS: I also have evacuation lists (or long term bug-out), including things to do at the house, and things to pack and where they are located (in case we have friends or family helping). We also have lists of things to buy if we have time when SHTF. Hubby’s list includes lumber, fuel, nails, car parts, etc. My list is food products, animal feed etc. We keep cash for the last run. We try to maintain good supplies, but if we can get more at the time, we will.
Finally something other than right wing sound bites. There are a lot of us out here that are concerned about survival and where our country is going that DO NOT buy into the baloney that is saying that liberals/progressives are the source of our problems. Yes, people on the left were beaten, imprisoned, and harassed for their beliefs. And yes, there are intolerant jackasses on the left, but the amount of violence, intimidation, denial of rights, and harassment coming from the right far outweighs any other source. I do not care about party labels-right wing democrats in the first 2/3 of the 20th century were responsible for much of the above.Look at the history that does not get taught-Rosewood, Tulsa, Southern Arkansas, and the thousands of lynchings that occurred. These were not done by progressives/liberals. Research history, read about our history, learn what really went on. Then proceed with making survival plans that are positive for our future.
But there are more and more like-minded people out there in communities around the country: engineers, nurses, doctors, dentists, people with different skills and mindsets and ways of contributing. We’re harmonious. We offer each other support and keep ourselves to ourselves. We see prepping as a way to increase our chances of survival if something happens. And we’re all ready to get out of the way when it does.
There is more to the business than just building a quality product. Aside of the advanced engineering that goes into underground structures, it’s also imperative for a company to have an advanced understanding of geology, excavation and the installation. We’ve been in the underground shelter business for more than a decade and we’ve installed more bunkers and bomb shelters than any of our competitors. This gives us a vast knowledge on every aspect of the business.

For younger folk panicked by Trump, best they read books now out about him; a few written by actual conservatives and by persons who actually have known him for 40 or 50 years. (Not any scribbled by a CNN cretin.) Conservative authors will be critical due more-material reasons, while leftists will merely be screaming their visceral fears, rage, and hate.

If the height of the Concrete shelter is decreased to 8 feet ( the same height of the ceilings in your home), the required depth of the hole is reduced to 10-11 feet and the gross interior area is 1,600 cubic feet. This is still more than a 10 foot pipe of the same length while also providing complete use of the space, as the side walls are not coming in toward the center as they do in a pipe.
Anyway, another thought runnin’ round my brain as of late is a mistake Gaye’s friend did, “Yes, you can use oxygenators and all that stuff. I tried that and I ended up throwing out all the food. It was rancid. I processed $1,200.00 of food at a local church facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. I threw it out one year later. It was a volunteer church group that did not know how many oxygenators to put in each #10 can.” – //foodstoragemoms.com/2015/11/dehydrating-food-for-long-term/
Monitor what your family eats for a week and use that as a guideline for getting started. The advantage of doing this is you will learn what your family likes so that you can shop accordingly. You would be surprised at how many people can’t remember what they ate yesterday let alone a week ago. Try to write everything down so that you don’t have to rely upon your memory.
It’s impossible to carry all the food you will need for a week unless you’re eating very high density proteins like nuts. Nuts and dried meat are two of the easiest off-the-cuff meals. Canned food has a lot of water that is wasted during the cooking process. Stay away from heavily flavored or salted nuts. The amount of salt present in the unsalted nut mixes is still sufficient enough to replace electrolytes.
Making bread is not as hard as you might think. Getting used to doing it in a Dutch Oven or solar oven is different but totally doable. I think the solar oven would be much easier to regulate the temperature and prevent burning but if you are cooking on a woodstove or hearth then you can still do it but you will have to pay more attention during cooking times.
Great article! I’ll be trying out several of these soon, since my family is in a tight spot financially and I’ve made the decision to stop buying dry goods or canned foods for the next several months in order to reduce spending. So we’re eating from long term food storage whenever I can incorporate ingredients into meals — one of our family favorites is canned meat fried up with rehydrated potato shreds & eggs & cheese to make sort of a corned beef or Spam hash! And we’ve already had good experiences with using cheese powder & dehydrated potato slices from the grocery’s “bulk food” section (very similar to the same items in our long term food storage) to make au gratin potatoes.
Rising S Bunkers offers the best underground steel shelters, bomb shelters, safe rooms & blast doors on the market. We lead the industry in quality and we have the highest standards for craftsmanship in underground bunkers and other emergency shelters. The Rising S standard of quality is unmatched by any other bunker company on the market today. Additionally, every project is completely customizable. Many customizations are available at no additional cost.
When you are in a stressful situation, it wouldn’t be a good time to have your family, especially small children, get used to eating things a different way. When you are prepping food, it is always good to keep the taste preferences that your family has in mind. This way, you are comfortable in the foods you are using, and like what you are packing.
Now, as for actual emergency warnings, I've got US Alerts, Disaster Alerts by Pacific Disaster, ubAlert, and HealthMap. Each app does display basically the same data, but hey each have different capacities and focuses, like HealthMap focuses on medical emergencies and outbreaks and has been the only app, to my knowledge, that links with CDC and WHO warnings and advisories.
I see myself as a modern man (born in 1980) and novice prepper, but dammed if I know anyone who hasn’t got a manual can opener, also storing soda bottles of water behind baseboards in kitchen units is also fairly common amongst people i know. If you have meat in large cuts and steaks in a freezer even once they defrost they keep a lot longer if preserved by smoking or drying, even ground meats can be made into patties and smoked to last longer, vegetables and fruits stored in a freezer can also have their useful lives extended by preserving as pickles and jam’s.
I giggled about your reason for not including wheat berries. I agree that many have few or no backing skills or how to make flour but…. I like the idea of wheat because if it is properly stored it can last 30 years and when I first started prepping I told my self that I wasn’t looking for a part time job rotating short lived stock. With my first 5 gal buckets of wheat (from a farmer friend) I also got a manual flour mill. Lots of fun and good exercise. I make some version of whole wheat bread every week. (Don’t want to be heavily invested in prepping and not know how to use what I got!) One season we had a complete wheat failure so I picked up a couple of buckets of soybeans. Another learning curve but eventually made pretty good bean dishes. Question for you and yours, during general internet research I found some articles on Trypsid inhibitor (TI)in beans and how it could be a real problem. Most of the articles appeared to be aimed at telling farmers to not feed soybeans directly (with out some processing) to pigs – in time it can kill them. The TI is neutralized when sufficiently heated. So the hours of boiling beans would take care of this condition but it doesn’t answer questions like:

If you just need to cover one person for two weeks in the cheapest way possible, you can buy one bucket for $130 and stretch the 27,330 total calories an extra day or two at 1,900 calories per day instead of the usual 2,275. Or buy two buckets for the cheapest way to cover two people. But we’d recommend a minimum of two buckets regardless, even for one person, just for redundancy and the unexpected.

Variety is the spice of life, so make sure when you are prepping; you get a wide-range of things. Getting only wheat flour might get boring after a while and could be dangerous if someone is allergic to it. So it is a good idea to have a variety of grains to use, as well as a grinder that you can turn dried food into flour-like substances to aid in supplementing nutrition.

Out in Colorado the local merchants were so up with this that they donated most all the supplies. we created fact sheets, handouts, recipes, Q&A, bring in other experts, maybe even offer door prizes ( we gave ball canning books 8.50 as door prize.) hands on folks prepped cleaned and bag. The extension office gave brochures, and goodies. They were held on Saturdays and were about 4 hours long.This can be expanded in many ways… and look how it’s helping. The folks who have to go to food banks don’t want too but don’t have the tools.
Earlier this year the hands of the Doomsday Clock moved to two minutes to midnight, as atomic scientists announced that the world is closer to annihilation than it has been in decades. Is it any wonder then that the worldwide phenomenon of prepping, in all its camouflaged, gun-toting, canned-food-hoarding glory, is spreading as global anxiety about everything from thermonuclear war to climate change takes hold.
I was brought up as a poor country boy. Our family did all the old-fashioned methods of living. We heated with wood, canned food, did the garden and had a well, killed pigs/hogs, and had a cow for milk and butter. Oh yeah, we also had a two-seater for comfort and had that luxury until I graduated from high school. I still appreciate the information you try to get out to upper level folks. It takes me back in time.

It’s always hard to predict what’s coming down the road, but some things are more likely than others – so it makes sense to put more of our preparedness efforts into making sure we can survive those. A lot of what we do will be useful in any scenario, of course, but it still helps to have an idea of what we might face. Now that we’ve had a couple of months to see how 2018 is shaping up, here are five of the threats I’m most concerned about for the rest of the year.

The secrecy thing, a must. If you notice I haven’t said how many years of food we have stocked up, or how much ammo to defend it. The ammo is mute though. 1 against 1, great. 1 against 100, not so much. And there will still be laws. So perhaps if you are like us, when the dates get close to the end, donate it to people or churches in need. Perhaps the Daily Bread type thing feeding the homeless. That excess is a tool you have to use now for the future later. Just don’t drop it all off at the same spot or the same time. We don’t grow everything we need and have to buy food too.
Vivos, a company owned by Robert Vicino, a California entrepreneur, has the rights to lease 575 of these concrete bunkers in Igloo outside of Edgemont, S.D. People from across the country were in Igloo on Friday, May 19, 2017, looking at the bunkers as end of the world shelters.(Chris Huber /Rapid City Journal via AP) Chris Huber / Rapid City Journal
In my tours in Afghanistan we used a lot of “connex”/shipping containers for bunkers. Keep in mind that this was AFTER we hardened them with additional steel “I” beams and a lot of extra welding and they were placed above ground surrounded by HESCO barriers and covered on top with about 3 feet of sand bags. The ceiling would bow inward from the weight even in spite of the reinforcement and the bunkers that had been there for several years would leak and the ceiling and walls were warped pretty badly. They worked great for incoming rocket fire and mortars… Read more »
Atlas Survival Shelters takes pride in finishing out your shelter to the means you are used to living in your home. Any wood materials used in an Atlas Shelter is either a hard wood or kiln-dried to ensure longevity. Making a shelter feel like you’re in the county jail takes away the normality you would need to survive long term underground in a survival shelter.
If it’s at all below the level of the water table, it will flood, concrete, steel, or other materials be damned. Sure, there is some top-notch engineering you can do to keep the water out, but it’s expensive. One solution is to put the bunker at ground level and then pile dirt on top of it, but you need very large amount of dirt to protect it from impact.
I don’t encounter any preppers at the school that day, but I do meet women from all over the United States and with all kinds of reasons for wanting to learn how to cut and drill wood, including a young yoga studio employee from Wisconsin who is building some custom shelving for her kitchen appliances and cookbooks, as well as two seniors from Washington, DC, who want to build a set of matching cabinets to house their prized collection of vintage wine glasses. Down by the garden, I meet a pair of women from Missouri who are hoping to go into business flipping houses. “We’re tired of waiting for our husbands to do it,” one of them says.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in their "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign says that "the public should report only suspicious behavior and situations...rather than beliefs, thoughts, ideas, expressions, associations, or speech...".[86] However, it is alleged that a DHS list of the characteristics of potential domestic terrorists used in law enforcement training includes "Survivalist literature (fictional books such as Patriots and One Second After are mentioned by name)", "Self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)", and "Fear of economic collapse (buying gold and barter items)".[87][88]

I’m sure I really don’t have to explain why a crossbow would make for a great prepper gear item to add to your stockpile. Hunting and defense applications when things get really bad – oh and regardless, practicing with one of these would be so much fun in and of itself. Regardless of prepping, this is one cool item to have and train yourself to use. As a side note, since we live in the UK, this one of the easiest long-range hunting tools we can obtain.

When the storm of the century is heading your way, know that it is time to evacuate. Load up your vehicle and go. As much as you feel that you are better off in your own home, if the authorities tell you to leave – and even if they do not – get out of harm’s way as a precautionary measure. Do so while you still have the ability to load up your vehicle with supplies and fill the tank with gas.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about the female prepper lifestyle is that it suggests a counterintuitive movement through time: a return to a slower, more elemental way of life, one that eschews the conveniences of modern consumer society in favor of the empowerment that comes from doing things yourself. Some of the women I spoke to said being a prepper helped them carry on the same old-fashioned life skills — like gardening, canning, and smart budgeting — that helped their mothers and grandmothers during the Great Depression. Others harkened back to the homesteaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose pioneering settlement and cultivation of the Great Plains form the backbone of the American myth of self-reliance.
It doesn’t even take something exotic like Ebola. A bad strain of the flu could overload our medical system and push society to the edge of collapse – and maybe beyond. Preparedness is going to be essential in any kind of major outbreak. Expect stores to be quickly emptied by panic buying, and then probably looting; hospitals won’t be able to cope, and everyone will be forced back onto their own resources. That’s why it’s vital to have those resources.

Even though I have a good start on my food pantry, it is always a good idea to look at others ideas. I had not thought of bulk pancake mix. I am a single person and got a great deal on Bisquick shake and pour ($1.00 each) I bought 2 dozen! I don’t really care for pancakes on a regular basis but once in a while… That all being said, I did purchase a vacuum sealer and have made good use of it. I also have a large dehydrator and visit the farmers market often for goodies to dehydrate and seal. When I have purchased these 20 items, I am then on to other needs such as shelter, etc. I have a lot of camping gear but not a good tent if I should have to vacate. Thank you Gaye – keep up the good work.

Just like rice, pasta is a great way to get carbohydrates. I love pasta and I’ve learned to improvise all sorts of meals using it. This is one of the cheapest survival foods you can find and there are many possibilities to stretch a meal using pasta. You can make pasta with tuna, with canned vegetables and I’ve even had pasta fried in lard with pieces of beef jerky seasoned with cayenne pepper. It is really worth stocking up on pasta. Make sure you buy some when you get at the grocery store.
When I first started prepping, I was making meals in jars, or called “just add water”. They are quick and convenient, but will use up water, fast! So now have home canned meats, fruits, veggies, soups, etc. These will compliment my jar meals because they already have liquid in them. Just use a little common sense and think food prep in everyday life, then think of ways to prep with little to nothing….prep conveniences.